4C State of Media: Parsing the D2C Phenomenon

Feb 07, 2019 • Aaron Goldman

We’ve just published our Q4 State of Media Report based on an analysis of $350 million in global digital media spend across 1,000+ brands as well as our coverage of 1,200+ TV channels in the US and UK.

Among the findings are how Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) brands are using audience insights to deploy data-driven strategies across multiple platforms.

Given the direct relationships these brands have with consumers – hence the acronym – it’s fascinating to see how first-party data compares to affinities extrapolated from publicly available information.

Note: this report is generated by applying 4C’s patented machine learning algorithms on top of public brand engagement data – nothing shown here is based on private/proprietary data from these brands or their customer.

One of the trends called out in our State of Media report is the increased adoption of linear TV advertising by D2C brands as they seek to expand their audience reach and generate new customers.

We also compare TV ad occurrences for leading D2C brands to traditional category brands. The good news for the latter is that the audience insights available from third party solutions like 4C Brand Compass are not exclusively the domain of D2C so, even without first-party data, brands can go beyond primary demos and leverage secondary audience targeting.
In our 2019 predictions, we projected that two D2C brands will join the top 15 TV advertisers. Time will tell how these trends unfold but from a State of Media perspective, we’ll take it one quarter at a time.